3022

ESL 21a

Essay 1.2

801 words

Symbol is a sign that used for represents or suggests something else. In human culture, symbols often have a lot of form, such as words, visual images, food, space, politics and authority, etc...May be just a few characters can represent a huge system. All human culture use symbols to express the underlying structure of their social systemGood!. Symbol can also represent ideal cultural characteristicsGood!, such as beauty, rich or authority in social system. We cannot understand all the symbols in difference culture, unless we have well-know about the culture system, history and development of this culture, but each culture has its own symbols system. Although the same of symbol, they can be represents difference meaning in each culture. We cannot find an equation in symbol system that made the symbol system become fun and interested.???

The Symbolism of food: cultural rules determine every aspect of food consumption. In New Guinea societies, men take their meals in men's house, separately from their wives and children. Women prepare and eat their food in their own house and take the husband's portion to the men's house. The women eat with their children in their own house. In China, The Chinese believe eggs symbolize fertility. After a baby is born in the family, the parents will prepare a lot of eggs. These eggs will be made for Chinese tradition "red eggs". This "red eggs" also represent that have a new baby in the family, and the Chinese will share the eggs with the neighbors to announce the neighbors their family have new life. In some regions of China the number of eggs presented depends on the sex of the child, an even number for a girl, and odd number for a boy. In Chinese culture, chicken forms part of symbolism of the dragon and phoenix. The Chinese also believe chicken is symbolizing a good marriage or coming together of families. So we can always find the chicken in wedding party or family dinner in Chinese culture.

The symbolism of politics and authority{1}: An entire nation may be represented by an array of symbols or individuals in positions of authority are associated with particular object that become symbols of the office they hold. The eagle and the bear was used by political cartoonists to portray the conflict between the United States and the former Soviet Union. In China, you always see a red star with character of 81; it's also means the Chinese army, as the Chinese army was formed on 1st of August. In England, Queen Elizabeth always shown a crown, coz crown is symbolize for her office. But in cultures worldwide, crown can also have another meaning, which can be symbolizing luxury. We can find many high class restaurant, hotel or shop used crown to represent a feel of luxury. For example, A World famous hotel called crown, also use symbol of crown to provide a feel of luxury.

The symbolism and social meanings of space:{2} Arrangements of space also make important symbolic statements about social groupings and social relationship. In a village in northeastern Thailand, space is divided to rules about marriage. The sleeping room is the most sacred part of the house. First cousins, with whom marriage is not permitted, may enter that room but may not sleep there. More distant relatives, whom one may marry, are not allowed to enter the sleeping room and must remain in the guest room. For Jewish, they do not allow people who are not Jewish to entry the house or stay for overnight. And all the food we bring to the Jewish house should be what we called culture food. Culture food is a kind of special food for Jewish. They also do not allow food that is not culture food to entry the space.

Finally, we can find many symbols in our dairy life for worldwide culture. We can classify symbols in many difference groups, such as food, space, social group, politics and authority, etc... Each symbol has their own meaning in every single culture. Sometimes people use symbols to show the culture character, sometimes people use symbols to show the power or authority; sometimes people use symbols to show social group, sometimes people use symbols to show a message to each other. But properly, people always use symbols to tell you a message or idea. We can not live without symbols in our diary life, coz symbols is part of our human culture or represent of the culture character. We can not use any words or sentences to instead symbols, as we live in symbols world. In human culture; it is difficult to catch the meaning of each symbol. It takes time for us to know more about the symbols and what is really means. But it also has many misunderstand for symbols.